


that would be easier (we've done everything wrong)

by persephassax



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Childhood Friends, Dreams and Nightmares, Family Drama, Force Bond (Star Wars), Kylo Ren Redemption, M/M, Romance, Slow Build, Snoke Being a Dick, The Force, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 08:51:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/persephassax/pseuds/persephassax
Summary: Fate is a many branching road whose destination has always been set. But the ending cannot be seen from the beginning.+++Poe dreams nightmares and memories and a place where he and Ben – Kylo Ren – can start to remember who they once were. Poe wakes to find that the roads we choose will always lead us to where we need to be.





	that would be easier (we've done everything wrong)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [idrilhadhafang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/gifts).



> This is for [idrilhadhafang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang) who asked for  
>  **Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Resistance Leader Poe** where
>
>> After the events of The Last Jedi, Poe Dameron and Kylo Ren have to go up against each other personally. How does Poe handle being Resistance Leader? How does Kylo handle being Supreme Leader? How do they react going up against each other?
> 
> and **Force Bond** where
>
>> What if Snoke initiated the Force Bond between Poe and Kylo instead of Kylo and Rey?
> 
> among other things.
> 
> I took a little from column A and a little from column B and I hope that you enjoy this. I'm new to Ben/Poe but I am very compelled by the potential the possibility of they're having a shared past and friendship/relationship. I hope I did them both justice with the rough hands they've both been dealt by fate. 
> 
> Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my thoughts with you. <3
> 
> (Title comes from [ASW 318](http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=318))

_Poe dreams_ the nightmare – the same one he’s been having nearly every night since Finn rescued him from the interrogation chamber in the belly of that First Order cruiser – this time new and improved with the truth he hadn’t then known. He is certain of his subconscious rearing up to torment him.

Before him is Ben – the same soft, dark hair and perpetual pout he remembers – except it’s not Ben, can’t be Ben, because Ben is dead. No, this is _Kylo Ren_. He feels his lungs constrict – the air growing thin around him and his muscles tightening despite the knowledge that he can never move in these nightmares.

“—You!” and that stab of familiarity hits him again. He hears Ben’s voice – without the mask, the vocoder – it’s just Ben Solo, the way he always sounded when he was surprised: shocked, on edge, ready at any moment to tip over into anger.

“Why are you here? _How_ are you here?”

Poe says nothing. He’s confused, this isn’t the script he knows to follow, none of the murky glare of his nightmares, the burnt-out, vivid recollection of that voice buzzing behind the mask: _I didn’t realize we had the Resistance’s best pilot with us._

But he knows at any moment that could creep in and Ben’s face will be the one he sees as Kylo Ren pushes into his mind to take that which is not his to have. He turns away from the vision, the apparition before him, turns for an eternity until all he sees is black and then the immaterial darkness of his bunk, sweat cooling on his skin.

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ Ben – Kylo Ren – standing before him, his chin tipped down, brows heavy over his eyes. He’s got a pensive look on his face, lips pushed out into a slight pout. Poe remembers the expression well.

“This isn’t just me, is it?” Poe asks, voice echoing out into the space he has come to think of as _in between_.

“No,” says Kylo Ren. His voice is deep and soft, the way Poe remembers Ben, the way he sounded when he wasn't sure if he was supposed to be keeping a secret.

“How…?” Poe doesn’t know how to finish the question. _How are you here? How am I here? How are we talking? How did it come to this?_

“The Force,” Ben – _Kylo Ren_ – says. Without the mask it is difficult for Poe to remember that the face he is looking at no longer belongs to Ben Solo. It makes his heart twist in his chest, a sharp little pain that makes his breath catch. “I was reaching out to connect with Rey, but she’s blocked me, but… I was drawn here – to this – to your mind. I didn’t know what it was.”

He cuts himself off abruptly, like he’s realized that he’s revealed too much. Poe almost wants to smile.

He can’t help but find Ben in all the places where he should be seeing Kylo Ren. The man standing in front of him has more than just Ben’s soft hair and soulful eyes; he has Ben’s quicksilver temperament and his enthusiasm for figuring out how things work.

That keen mind and unquenchable curiosity to understand was what originally brought them together, back before Ben got sent away to train with Luke, before his temper and his relationship with the Force and the dark voice in his head got the better of him.

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ and finds that in the space noise of the dregs of the Resistance it is easy to hide this new development. He tells no one, not his lieutenants, not the General, not even Finn. He certainly doesn’t tell Rey, the only person who might be able to understand, to help him stop this bizarre phenomenon. Ben – or Kylo Ren – is doing it on purpose, and Poe has no way of knowing for certain that he isn’t rifling through his thoughts, obtaining whatever remains of the Resistance’s secrets. But his reluctance remains, he is unwilling, and ultimately unable, to bring himself to tell anyone about these secret moments where the rest of the world fades away. It’s not something special, Kylo Ren was not looking for him, he didn’t need Poe Dameron when he reached out through the Force. But Poe knows, he has to believe, that regardless of what _Kylo Ren_ wants or needs, Ben Solo (the glimpses of him that Poe still sees, that he cannot help but remember whenever he looks into those soft, brown eyes, at that soft, red mouth) needs him, the way he used to need him.

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ a memory, he’s sure of it. It doesn’t have feeling of ozone and sweat, the sticky burnt smell-sensation of his nightmares. It’s got the nectar syrup slowness and the warmth of a summer’s day in his childhood. He sees Ben, the way he was when Poe first really noticed him, hanging around the ship hangar, nervous at the edge of the hubbub, gangly and unused to his still new height, his bright eyes quick to follow the movements of the pilots and the mechanics around him.

Poe watched him, aware that this was General Organa’s precious son, but seeing him for the first time as a young man, a mind and a body and a curiosity all his own, not merely a symptom of the marriage between Han Solo and Leia Organa, but a soul looking to find that which could make it whole.

He’s pale and serious looking, surprisingly quiet given the stories people around the camp whisper about his temper. Poe can’t tear his eyes away. He remembers what it felt like, the instant full body flush when he really _saw him_. But somewhere underneath that, his mind can’t shake the ache of _today-right-now_ , the way that he knows this isn’t going to last. This is merely the first act in a tragedy he knows, now, there was no way of averting. Fate has infinitely branching roads which all lead to the same destination.

But he pushes forward and the world folds around him and he feels the nervousness that clutched his stomach as he approaches Ben Solo the first time, eager to talk to him, about anything and everything, aching to see his face flush and his lips form a smile. He doesn't have a plan, his flight suit (still a little too big, then) tied loosely around his hips, his skin prickling with sweat that has nothing to do with the heat of the hangar bay. Ben is looking away from him, and Poe can see the line of his tendon tight under his pale skin, the moles that fleck his cheek, the soft brush of his hair against his neck. Poe gets real close before he says, sudden and too loud, “Hey.”

Ben jumps and Poe feels a rush of _something_ cascade over him, head to toe, as Ben turns around to face him, his brows pulled down, one of his fists clenched.

“Sorry,” Poe says. “I was wondering if you could help me with something.” He has no idea what’s going to come out of his mouth in the next three seconds but he keeps talking, hoping that he won’t sound like a complete moron. “There’s a bolt I need to tighten and my arms just aren’t _quite_ long enough.”

He gives Ben a look, his eyes following the lines of him from head to toe, appraising, and he hopes it feels something like the rush he felt against his own skin when he startled the boy.

“You seem like you’ve got the reach I need,” he finishes and gives his best slightly crooked smile, the one that gets some of the women at the camp to giggle when they meet around the campfire to share stories. He knows what he looks like, knows what it does, but he’s not quite sure how far he can take it.

Ben looks him over, eyes dark and intent, and Poe worries he’s said something wrong. But then Ben gives a little, jerky nod of his chin, just a sharp downward motion. He wets his lips and says, voice surprisingly deep, “Okay.”

Poe feels tension run out of him and he can feel himself flush with the pleased heat that fills him from head to toe. He grins, and after a moment realizes he’s probably showing too many teeth, so he bites his lips trying to reign it in.

Time and space slide away from him and he remembers how it felt, the long nights staying up late, trying to learn everything about Ben, wanting to tell him everything about himself, wanting to know and be known. He can see the courtship he didn’t then know to recognize. He desperately memorized the feeling of that long body against his, when they inevitably lay down side by side, helpless against the demands of sleep.

He sits outside himself as he hears the way Ben confessed time and again about the voice in his head, the one that sounded like it came from inside him. The one that terrified him. _It tastes like doubt and hate and what if it’s me?_ he asked Poe, his eyes wide and terrified in the dark. _What if I hate everyone and what if it’s me? How could I be that person?_

Poe didn’t have any answers back then, no answers now, but he can feel the way Ben felt cradled against him, while he held him close and tight like maybe that would be enough to keep this fragile boy together.

He promised him that he would always answer when Ben called for him, that he would stand with him and by him and that together they could banish all of the darkness in the Galaxy.

But fate had other plans and Poe’s dream is suffused with the burnt colors of his nightmares; as he walks off the dart, as he looks for the dark hair and familiar smile that have come to greet him at each return. Instead, the General pulls him aside and tells him Ben was sent away to study the way of Jedi, and Poe’s heart stops.

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ choking on the echoes of that decision. He came back to find that Ben was gone, his boy – _his boy_ , with the big brown eyes and the soft mouth, who shivered in the dark until Poe would wrap his arms around him and hold him tight, promising him refuge from the dark things, the thoughts he couldn’t place that crawled out of some hole in his head he couldn't figure out how to fill – _that_ boy, had been sent away without so much as a word, no opportunity for a goodbye.

Turning the light on, banishing both dreams and darkens Poe remembers. He had taken his time watching and waiting before he approached Ben, back then. He was still young, a little older than Ben, sure, but only just realizing what his sly smiles and dark eyes could get him. Still surprised every time someone seemed to like him despite his attitude and his reckless temperament, the kind of thoughtless interest he didn’t want from this dark haired, quick eyed boy. He didn’t want Ben to think he was only taking notice because of who his parents were, either. Ben Solo, tall and finally growing into his broad shoulders, was something Poe wanted to take apart, figure out how all his pieces came together, certain that there must be some miracle in his mystery.

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ , the heat of his bunk is claustrophobic, oppressive. He stumbles out into the corridor to join the other sleepwalkers among the high command making their way to the bridge. The news is dire. Huddled together, what few are left of the Resistance leadership, diminished again by one who was more than one, look like lost children. In their nightclothes, rubbing their eyes and shivering, they are in no way formidable.

“He deserves to know,” Poe says. The room goes quiet, suddenly making him aware of the sound of everyone's combined breathing, unnoticed until it is absent, all the anguished faces turn to him.

Rey’s cheeks are tear-stained and her face is angry, impotent in the face of this evil – the twin demons of time and human frailty – which cannot be defeated with a lightsaber or the Force. But Poe has already lost a mother once, twice when Leia reminded him she was a General first and foremost, a diplomat and a politician, before she was anyone’s family. This third loss is no more or less than the ones before it.

But it is still heavy, a weight across his shoulders. He is unlikely to be made a General anytime soon, but everyone knows that in the absence of Ben Solo, he, Poe Dameron, is the heir apparent to the Organa dynasty.

“He gave up his right long ago,” Rey hisses. Finn’s brow is furrowed and he stands close to Rey, his hand tight in hers.

“I won’t have her death made into propaganda,” Poe says, his own voice the only sound he can hear as he parts his lips. “Not for us, not for them. We have to be the ones to tell him. He can’t learn it from his spies.”

The word sends a frisson through the room. Poe can feel the way gravity rolls through the bodies around him, making his head spin. This is the reminder that they are at war. No one can truly be trusted, no matter how small their forces, there is always the danger that someone will lose faith, that any one of them can be bought.

“It seems you are set on this course of action, Commander,” says one of the older admirals. Poe is suddenly thrown back in time and he is locking down the bridge, attempting his mutiny, his coup, his faithful faithlessness, and he knows that he will be forever trapped in that moment, proving himself to be unstoppable, untrustworthy, intemperate. He takes in the masks of the admiralty, what's left, around him and almost smiles.

“I am willing to be convinced otherwise,” Poe replies, but he can feel the way his eyes are crystalline in the low light, knowing that to attempt it would be an exercise in failure. “But I believe this to be our best shot at pre-empting negative fall out.”

Finn, the sole point of warmth in the room, any room, his personal savior, bites his lip and he asks, “Wouldn’t he have felt it? Through the Force?”

Poe knows Rey had woken crying in the night from the disturbance in the Force as Leia passed on. Finn had held her as she sobbed. Eventually, she had marched out of their quarters, grey-faced and grim to meet high command, arriving at the same time as the medics who were there to deliver the bad news.

Poe looks at Finn, aware that his next words are bombs set to detonate this fragile, quiet peace, and he needs them to let him do this, all alternatives are impossible. Ben needs to hear it from him.

“Telling him is a reminder that we are unbent and unbroken. The fire of hope continues to burn in the Resistance, even without Leia Organa,” Poe says, recalling the way it felt, on Crait, facing down the battering ram and the First Order, Luke and Ben and the red wounds scarring the salt flats. “We are mourning, but we are not weak.”

Finn’s face fades out at the edges as Poe looks at him, and Rey seems unaware of the fresh tears sliding down her cheeks, staining the air, her mouth twisted in grief and frustration. Poe makes eye contact with everyone in the room, his eyes coming back to Rey and Finn.

“I want to be there,” Rey says, shattering the ice that has formed on Poe's skin, and turns and disappears from the room. Finn keeps his gaze a second longer, hot against the places where Poe has long since frozen over, before he turns, too. The weight of all the eyes of the admiralty on him, Poe cannot let out the breath he was holding and he can feel it suffocating him.

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ the now familiar dark of _in between_ and a devastated Kylo Ren – a hard faced Ben Solo – is before him, eyes catching the half-light, swallowing and reflecting it by turns.

“She’s dead,” he says, those mercurial eyes trained, unblinking, on Poe.

“She’s gone,” Poe confirms.

“All this time,” his tone is all Ben Solo, a lost boy, alone, facing the dark. Poe wants to reach out and hold him, but things are no longer that way between them. He waits, uncertain what will follow. In the silence, he feels words bubble, unbidden out of his mouth.

“She was still waiting,” he says and hopes that this won’t be the thing that ruins them both. “She wanted you to come home, even if she couldn’t say it.”

Kylo Ren, his face more still and terrible than the mask he has abandoned, looks beyond Poe at something he is certain he could not see, should he turn around.

“I didn’t expect it to hurt,” Ben says.

Poe feels the empty space where something broken in him tries to smile.

“We never do,” he says.

For the first time, they are silent. Cradled together _in between_ they don’t speak, but they sit and listen to each other breathe.

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ to a clear morning. He is calm in a way he is sure he remembers, though he cannot name the last time he felt it settled in his bones. His morning is fluid, his breath comes easy, and when he sets his feet on the floor, he doesn’t feel like at any moment the ground will go spinning away beneath him leaving him in freefall.

He meets with the admirals and a stiff, grim faced Rey. Technicians worked overnight to prepared the encrypted channel they will use to contact the First Order. Rey and Poe will stand to deliver the news to their enemies’ high command. The room is full of muted voices, and blunted feeling; the Resistance is not yet ready to face what is to come. Today is another step on a road none choose to travel.

“We’re ready,” comes the word from the head tech. His gills shiver as he delivers the news.

“Fire it up,” says Poe. His calm is a shield between him and hot eyes of the Resistance leadership.

“Patching through,” says one of the techs, running a bank of monitors and switch panels.

There is an endless moment of static, space noise and signal decay as they scramble the transmission coordinates.

 _“The Resistance,”_ comes the cold, plummy voice through the static. _“Are you ready to deliver your surrender?”_

Rey’s expression is impassive, but Poe can feel a slow burn of anger spark in his chest. General Hux is the king of rats; fanatic and treacherous. Poe opens his mouth to tell him they will never surrender to the likes of him, imagining himself delivering a further blow by asking to speak to someone with real power, rather than wasting their time with those who only covet it. Rey interrupts,

“We have a message for Supreme Leader Kylo Ren.”

 _“You may deliver your message to me,”_ the disgusted curl of his lips is audible even through the murky connection.

“It is a private message for the Supreme Leader of the First Order, deliverable only to him,” Poe says, making sure to keep his words clear.

There is a beat of silence, where Poe imagines Hux trying to keep the disgust, the anger, the envy off his pasty face.

_“Very well. He will be notified.”_

And with that they settle in to wait.  

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ , he sees Kylo—no, _Ben’s_ broad shoulders, pulling tight the dark fabric that makes up his tunic, hands clenched tight around the lip of the sink in the refresher. His hair is stringy and unwashed and when he looks up into the mirror, Poe sees the way he's pale, sheened with sweat, dark clinging to his eyes, like sleeplessness is an parasite that has started to eat the color away under his skin. He looks terrible. It takes a moment before Kylo – Ben – notices and meets his eyes in the reflection of the mirror. The rest of the room is indistinct, like an unlit storage room or badly calibrated comm feed. He looks nearly scared to see Poe looking back at him.

After an unexpectedly long moment Poe asks, “When was the last time you slept?”

Ben lets out a humorless laugh. He closes his eyes and shakes his head slightly, pressing his lips together.

“You don’t sleep in this den of vipers,” he says, deep voice raspy. Poe steps closer, wanting to reach out to him, but uncertain that it wouldn’t destroy the illusion; Ben disappearing before him just as Poe goes to touch his shoulder, not unlike the first time, the last time, when Ben was gone, a ghost, just as Poe thought they were finding their way. Before everything happened.

“At best—” he continues, sounding hollow, even in the muted space that makes up the _in between_. “At best, you close your eyes.”

“What are you talking about?” Poe asks, feeling his brow furrow, he catches sight of himself in the mirror, and sees the way his own cheeks are darkened with stubble, the now ever-present bags under his eyes, the way his lips don’t seem to remember how to smile.

“The General,” Ben is shaking his head. “Hux is just biding his time until he can kill me. He’s not the only one.”

He trails off, voice fading into the warm dark. Poe takes another step closer, no longer looking into the mirror, but instead letting his eyes settle on the slope of Ben’s jaw, the place where his ear peeks out of his lank hair, the sliver of pallid cheek that faces him.

“You’ve taken down bigger enemies than that guy,” Poe says, his imagined levity falling flat. He believes it, Kylo Ren is a formidable enemy, as was Ben Solo. Among all his faults, Ben’s biggest was his fighting spirit.

“It’s not just him,” Ben grinds out, his teeth clenched, his fingers spasming tighter around the sink, shoulders hitching up and pulling tight, anger pulling taut along every muscle. “It’s all of them, Dameron.”

And suddenly he sounds defeated. Poe is still caught on the way his name sounded falling from those familiar, frustration-twisted lips. It’s been so long since he’s heard it in that voice.

“Poe—”

His heart nearly stops in his chest, and he takes another step forward until he can feel the heat radiating off Ben, somehow, impossibly, despite the endless night of the Galaxy between them.

“—The fighting never ends,” Ben continues. “I’ve fought so hard, to be here, to have this. I just wanted it to be over, to be quiet. What’s the point of this power, this position, if I have to fight with every breath to keep it?”

Poe no longer has to worry about his heart stopping, because it’s been broken clean in two. He can see where Ben’s skin has settled into wrinkles of exhausted pain at the corner of his eyes. Poe knows neither of them is built for civilian life; there is no future for them if the Resistance triumphs. Men of war have no homes in peacetime.

“Ben,” the name feels strange on his tongue, he coughs, clearing his throat. “Kylo, we—”

“No, say it again,” Ben—  _Ben—_ interrupts.

“Ben,” Poe says and Ben tips his head back, like he’s feeling a fresh breeze on his skin. Poe looks into the mirror and sees the long line of Ben’s throat, pale and smooth above the black of his tunic. “Ben, this isn’t how it should be.”

He knows instantly it’s the wrong thing to say. He can watch the tension fall back down into Ben, anger taking over. He turns and steps close again, looming over Poe, til they’re standing chest to chest, nearly touching and Poe has to look up into his face and pretend that he doesn’t mind.

“How it’s supposed to be?” Ben—no, _Kylo_ says, voice hissed and low. “There’s never been a place for me. What would _Leia_ have done with me? What about _Han Solo?_ Snoke, at least, had a plan. I wasn’t anything but a tool, but I had a _purpose_.”

His eyes are dark where they seek out Poe’s, driving into him like daggers, cold and bright.

“We deserved better,” Poe replies, and he’s hoarse, tears unexpectedly clog his throat. “We deserved the chance to build a future for ourselves.”

He heaves in a breath and lays it all out, a single word: “Together.”

And he watches Ben’s jaw snap shut, his eyes go wide and wet and what little flush had worked up into his cheeks drains away. His eyes dart this way and that, taking in Poe’s whole face and then just as suddenly as if a door was shut in his face, Poe is alone.

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ tears still tightening his throat and he has to take slow, shuddering breaths, while the bright glare of the dawn light creeps across the ceiling of his room. The sun is up and the air in his room has already begun to warm before he is able to get out of bed.

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ nothing, a soft instant of blood dark behind his eyelids before the morning cycle wakes him and he starts a new day.

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ in unimaginable agony, he knows he’s dying, he must be, no human being can live through something that hurts like this, it’s impossible. His right leg is on fire, durasteel spikes being driven through it, hot and icy and making his vision white out. His throat is raw and that’s when he realizes he’s screaming. There is noise around him, people moving– He’s moving? It doesn’t matter, because he’s dying, he must be, he must be dying.

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ quiet and darkness and respite, he knows that his body is somewhere else, thrashing and screaming, he remembers thinking he was dying. All of that is distant now. He has an awareness of pain, but he can’t _feel_ it. He’s a little cold, but he is comfortable. He feels safe. Nothing can hurt him here, he doesn’t know how, but he knows it is true.

Between one blink and the next, Ben is with him. Poe almost doesn’t notice, except that Ben is reaching for him, his hands are so _big,_ and Poe brings one of his own up to compare them. But he notices Ben’s expression, folded around the eyes, tight around the mouth, and unbidden comes the thought: _He looks worried_.

“What’s wrong?” Poe asks. The words feel like smooth, round stones in his mouth. He is reminded of the river rocks he saw once when he landed on a planet that was mossy and green from an intricate system of creeks and streams that flowed out of the ground.

“What do you mean?” Ben’s voice is tight and his expression has only gotten more pinched. “I heard you… you…” he stumbles trying to find the right word, and Poe just watches him and waits for him to figure it out, trying to look serious. “You called for me.”

Poe feels confusion spread little doubting tendrils through his mind. How could he call for him? Ben Solo is dead, and even though he isn’t, Kylo Ren is halfway across the Galaxy, on a star destroyer Poe doesn’t know where.

“I heard you,” Ben says, tone going moody and petulant. “You reached out for me.”

Poe shakes his head, trying to clear away the lingering sense of fuzziness. What Ben is saying doesn’t make any sense. But it must be true, he was here and then Ben was here. Usually they come to the _in between_ together, from opposite ends of the Galaxy they reach this place; between the First Order and the Resistance, between the stars themselves, leaving everything else behind. But Poe was here first. Then Ben.

“I can _sense_ something,” Ben says, looking Poe over. “What happened?”

Poe thinks, he casts his mind back and he feels the way the space they’re in shudders around his attempt to pull away from it into memory, but it holds. Ben comes into sharper focus for a split second and the _in between_ holds.

“I was flying, it was a—” he pauses as he thinks. “It was a recon mission. We were scouting to confirm rumors of a First Order outpost in a nearby system.”

Suddenly, he’s overwhelmed by the smell of burning fuel, the vertigo of an x-wing with one of its engines shot out, the ground is spiraling, rushing up in a blur of color to meet him through the window, there is just a scream of endless noise rushing in his ears. Suddenly it all stops.

“I think I got shot down,” his voice says, as if from far away.

And then the pain, the memory of the pain, the memory of something he cannot truly remember. He knows it hurt and he knows it hurt so much more than he can imagine hurting and it hurts _everywhere_.

Suddenly, he feels a hand on his bicep, it’s warm. He realizes his skin is bare, he’s just in a thin shirt and Ben’s hand – _Ben’s hand_ – is warm where it presses against his arm. They’re both clammy. The memory fades out and Ben’s grip on him tightens and he can see Ben’s mouth moving, his lips slick on the inside and red, so red.

“Let it go, let it go, it can’t hurt you here, you’re safe, you’re safe,” Ben’s voice filters in slowly. And Poe tries to smile, as his cheeks move he realizes he’s crying, salty wet smears drying on his skin.

“Remember,” Poe grinds out, through the clutter of emotions. “I use to tell you that he couldn’t get you.”

He ducks his head a little to look up at Ben, whose chin is tipped forward, hair falling around his face.

“I used to tell you that the voice in your head – Snoke, I guess – couldn’t tell you anything when we were together,” Poe lists forward, helplessly. He remembers the warm dark of his bunk, where Ben slept a handful of times, tangled together, Poe promised him that he would keep him safe from the things that welled up inside him.

“I remember,” he replies in a hoarse whisper. “You told me it was just a voice, that he didn’t know me, he couldn’t know everything. You said I could choose.”

His voice is strangled. Poe knows they’re thinking of the same thing. Ben didn’t have a choice. When Han and Leia sent him away, they lost him, once and for all.

Poe feels himself wavering, not emotionally, but somehow physically. He can feel the edges of himself go indistinct, the pain that was muted and far away is growing brighter, unignorable. He knows his respite is coming to an end.

“What would you have chosen?” Poe pushes the words out quickly fighting the leaden feeling of his tongue.

The look on Ben’s face is hollow, he looks like a puppet, frozen in time, waiting for someone to move him. He looks up, then, and meets Poe’s eyes. If his face is a mask, his eyes are two coals, hot centers in a dying fire.

Poe feels himself falling – falling falling falling – back into his body where everything is noise and pain and light, but through it all, he hears Ben’s voice, echoing out from the _in between_ :

“I don’t know.”

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ to the muted life of the medical ward. Machines beep softly around him, and he can see a droid or two bustling beyond the half-pulled curtains around his bed. His leg is wrapped in a bacta unit and hoisted up to accommodate the plastic bag. He remembers Finn, rushing through the halls, leaking bacta everywhere. He sees a jacket thrown over the back of a chair next to his bed and looks around for his visitor.

He becomes aware of the low murmur of voices beyond the curtain. One is sharper, with an accent – _Rey_ , he thinks – and the other is lower, quiet, warm and familiar –  _Finn_. He closes his eyes and pushes himself to focus his hearing, imagining pulling the voices closer to him.

_“I’m telling you, I felt something.”_

_“I believe you, you know I do, but just because I believe you doesn’t mean I understand.”_

_“It’s a… disturbance in the Force,_ around _Poe. As if someone was manipulating it around him. I don’t know how to explain it, but sometimes it’s almost like there is someone else there with him.”_

_“And you’re sure that it’s something from outside? He could be like Leia connected to the Force but not, you know, like you and Luke?”_

_“It’s not coming from him, mostly, but this time I felt a ripple going_ outwards _when we were bringing him into medical. He was yelling, but then I felt something else, like he was calling out for someone, except it was in the Force.”_

_“Do you think he knows? Should we tell the admirals that he might be compromised?”_

_“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.”_

Poe opens his eyes to take in the murky dark of the ceiling above him. Knowing both Ben and Rey are right, that he did call out for Ben, that as he was sure he was dying, his last thought, last plea with the Galaxy, with the universe, wasn’t for his friends, his comrades, not for the Resistance, but for Ben Solo, who exists only as a memory.

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ nothing.

 

 _Poe wakes_ with a dull ache in his leg and the dim light of the infirmary around him.

 

 _Poe dreams_ but doesn’t remember.

 

 _Poe wakes_.

 

 _Poe dreams_.

 

_Poe wakes._

 

+++

 

 _Poe dreams_ with urgency, the feeling of something necessary pushing him into the _in between_. He sees Ben, pacing, he’s down to the basics; pants, suspenders, boots, and sleeveless shirt. His body is sweaty and his scowl is magnificent. He doesn’t notice Poe immediately. But between one turn and the next, he looks up and his eyes are bright.

“Are you alright?” Poe asks, understanding now what Ben must have felt. “I’m here, are you okay?”

Just like that, something that was anxious and coiled beneath Ben’s skin settles. The urgency doesn’t fade, but Poe feels the shift where the dark of the _in between_ goes soft, like an exhalation of breath.

“I need to get out of here,” he says. For the first time since Poe was a young man, Ben Solo stands before him. “Hux is waiting to put his plan for mutiny into motion. I can’t stand against an army.”

Poe feels the bottom of his stomach drop out.

“Are you sure? Are you safe?”

Ben sits on something indistinct, and Poe steps toward him. He has his face in his hands, but when he looks up, there’s a rueful smile on his face. Poe thinks suddenly of Han Solo, the stories Leia used to tell about their adventures under the old Empire. _Never tell me the odds_.

“He plans to blow up the ship while I’m on it. He ran the numbers and the damage falls within the parameters of ‘acceptable losses,’ but he can’t do that without getting off the ship first. I’ve managed to delay his plan by trapping him here, but it won’t last.”

Poe nods.

“He’s a slippery bastard, that one,” he says. Relief that Ben is okay, if only for the moment, colors his words with humor.

“In more ways than you know,” Ben replies.

Poe moves forward until he can step into the space that Ben has claimed for his own.

“So, what’s the plan?”

 

+++

 

 _Poe wakes_ in the shelter of the x-wing. The air still carries the night chill and dew has settled over the vegetation beyond the shelter of the ship. He stares at the shadow of the craft above him, making out the shape of the metal plates that form the body, the studs that hold it together make familiar patterns. He is on the edge of a long blink that will shunt him back into sleep when he hears the soft _shuff-shuff_ of someone walking. The planet is mostly uninhabited by sentient life, and none in these parts, and much of its wildlife is nocturnal.

Poe rolls on his side to see who approaches, but his heart is pounding. He licks his lips and looks out into the feeble light of the dawn. The person walking toward him is tall, he is wrapped in black, though the lines of the clothing are softer than usual. Poe lifts open his sleep sack and pulls himself out and upright. He can feel the damp of the air settle against his neck and arms. His skin pebbles, but he knows it is not just from the ambient chill. His leg is still stiff from the injury he sustained in the crash, but he steps out into the open to meet the approaching figure.

Ben comes to a standstill more than an arm’s length away from him. Poe looks him over from head to toe. His robes are reminiscent of the things he wore as Kylo Ren, but now, they lack the sharpness, the stiffness and formality that his garb used to carry. He looks like a mad hermit, wrapped in funerary rags, left to wander the wastes of the Galaxy. Poe almost smiles at the thought. He takes his time looking over his face, the way his long hair frames his cheeks, emphasizing the narrow cut of his jaw. His mouth is soft, the one thing about him that hasn’t changed at all since the last time Poe saw him in person, nearly a decade ago. Ben presses his lips together, his expression sliding ever more firmly into misery. His brows are tipped low over his eyes, accenting the exhaustion that clings to him. But when Poe meets his eyes, they are bright and clear. While everything else about him screams of a man who is prepared to give up the fight and die, his eyes, for the first time, show a man who is at peace.

“Hey,” Poe says with a crooked smile.

Ben stares at him for a short moment and then steps forward again, cutting the distance between them in half.

“You came,” he replies, in exhausted disbelief.

“I made you a promise,” Poe says, and knows that Ben remembers those early promises, when they were younger, when even a Galaxy at war held possibility.

Ben steps forward again, his stride eating up almost all the remaining space between them, and Poe has to tilt his chin up to continue to meet his eyes.

“He was wrong,” Ben says, his voice quiet. “Snoke said you were lying, back then. What could I give you? You’d take what you wanted and leave, you couldn’t want me as I am.”

Though his eyes are trained on Poe’s, his gaze is dreamy, speaking into the past, trying to tell a boy who has long since disappeared that he could have made another choice. _Things could have been different_.

“You look tired,” Poe tells him. Because neither of them is ready to face the burden of the past; justice and reckoning will come, but here and now, on an empty planet, they are outside the roles that fate has set for them. Here and now, they are themselves, devoid of obligations beyond the ones they made to each other.

“Let’s lie down,” he continues, gesturing to the sleeping roll behind him. Half-turned away, he feels Ben step forward again, the distance between them instead filled with body heat. Poe closes his eyes.

 _Poe dreams_ the way Ben’s jaw feels in his hands, the way the strands of hair will tickle his fingers, the heat of him all along his body, the soft press of… Poe opens his eyes.

 _Poe wakes_ with Ben’s lips pressed soft and hesitant against his, those big hands coming forward to wrap around his hips, the cradle of his palms holding the jut of his hips, his own hand comes up to rest against the tight line of Ben’s shoulder, where the pale, warm skin of his neck is visible over the wide collar of his shirt. Poe closes his eyes and leans more fully into the warmth radiating off Ben, feeling the hands on him press tight and secure against him, taking his weight and holding him. He parts his lips, trying to feel more of Ben’s mouth against his, Ben mirrors the gesture with a tremulous inhalation. Heat explodes in the back of Poe’s head, running fast down his spine and into his limbs, and he licks at the inside of Ben’s lips, scraping his teeth against the swell of that full lower lip as he pulls away only to rush back in, desperate to feel the whole of him. The hands on his hips tighten, hard, and pull him fully against Ben’s long body, his own fingers tighten in long dark hair.

In the pale light of the early morning, in a forgotten corner of the Galaxy, Poe for the first time feels the levity of destiny and knows that there are many twists in the branching roads of fate, and here and now, he thinks, for the first time, _Finally._

 


End file.
